Islands In The Stream
by WolfBane2
Summary: Spoilers for Chapter 246 and before, Kakashi's POV during the second bell trial in 246. Because someone is only really gone when everyone has forgotten they were ever there at all.


_"You can only watch someone go away so_ many times...To _feel the loss, to know what was lost. To remember. That might be what I do best after all. I hope not." –Peter S. Beagle, "The Folk Of The Air"_

Note: Takes place during Chapter 246 of the manga, after Naruto had returned from his two-and-a-half-year training with Jiraiya.

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The two and a half years had passed in a blur of speaking shadows to him, for none of the missions he was assigned seemed to matter much. Kakashi had not been startled early that morning, when a messenger from Tsunade had arrived shortly before sunrise to inform him that Naruto was finally returning to Konoha after his training escapade, and that he, Naruto and Sakura were to form a mission squad starting that very day. Actually, he hadn't really thought much about it at all. It had been two and a half years now since he had seen either of the two former pupils, but he was not really expecting much change from the Naruto and Sakura he had known before.

The two did not look so different. Oh, Naruto had grown, muscles long and taut and his eyes with a rational gleam that had solidified from the flickering spark Kakashi had known into a steady shield, ready for use at will of its master. Sakura's hair was shorn into a long pixie cut, her clothes teasing males to take a closer examination, her chest (Kakashi noted this with interest, for he was the first to admit his perverted tendencies) significantly filled out, her legs long and sleek. But for all their physical maturity, for all the training that had hardened their questioning gazes into confident stares, they were still Naruto and Sakura. And Kakashi loved them all the more for it.

Kakashi wondered if either of the two remembered Sasuke. It sometimes seemed to him that no one did. For all the control he had mastered over himself over his years of training, for all the laws of his upbringing that said you were not for any reason to reveal weakness, the renegade words still slipped from between his lips. "And back then…Sasuke was with us too."

Instantly, he was shamed. Of course they remembered. How could they not? At the forbidden name, Sakura's chin clamped tightly to her chest, and the carefully-regulated power in her aura dissipated as she slid to the ground, hugging her knees in an attempt to think of things other than the person whom a faraway fraction of her still pined for even now. Naruto's reaction was rougher, as though his former instructor had physically struck him, for no rhyme or reason. He too fell to the ground, cringing, though from loss or regret of failure, even Kakashi's Sharingan was helpless to decipher. At that moment, even the Jounin lowered his head in abashment. How could he have, even so briefly, even after all the time that had passed so swiftly, ever have doubted their love for the third member of their pack? The mere idea, which had seemed so plausible as the question had spoken itself, he now realized was utterly unthinkable. Perhaps a less tightly bonded team could have forgotten the sting of a lost teammate as the years passed, but not Team Seven. In Team Seven, there had been true love. Not the puppyish infatuation twelve-year-old Sakura had claimed for her dark-haired crush, or sexual lust, or the pure adoration that tied students to worthy teachers and subordinates to their leaders. Real love. The love of friends, the love that writes into the instincts of wolves to clean one another's wounds, and into the instincts of humans to laugh as they leap into hell's fires to save someone whom they have admitted into their hearts. Yes, the three had played and cried and lived apart for two and a half years, but to these two the years had meant little, for they had not lost their bond with one another and with their departed friend. Wounds were healed, but the scars had not faded.

Until this day, when he mentally compared these new attacks and strategies to the wobbling attempts of almost four years' past, Kakashi had not truly realized how the battle skills of Sakura and Naruto had developed so greatly. Perhaps it was because he had spent some of those four years teaching them how to successfully handle the basics of those powers, or perhaps he'd been too wrapped up in making sure that none of the three got killed in the process. But now that he truly looked at their strength instead of looking through it, he saw Naruto's might and agility, Sakura's chakra-control and accuracy, and how even after two and a half years' of separation, they combined them into a formidable onslaught. He would not be reading during this particular trial.

His new copy of Icha Icha Paradise clasped in one hand, Kakashi looked into the eyes of his former pupils. They were not the eager, unsure pups that he had once faced in this clearing almost four years prior, gazing up questioningly at their dubious instructor, the pups that had fought awkwardly and without teamwork. Sakura no longer cowered behind the protection of her stronger teammates, and Naruto now retained the ability to figure out beforehand the consequences of, say, blowing up the tree that he was perched in. The two were now mature ninjas, meeting his scrutinizing stare with undaunted grins, their postures squared and sure. They would battle together, each aiding the other's move with their next, working as a pack to bring down the prey. For that's what Team Seven had grown into being, and still somehow were even after Sasuke's betrayal and Naruto's journey: A loving pack.

A wicked little pack, too. If Kakashi had learned anything from the first students he had ever passed into Geninhood, it was that the Team Seven trio were quite possibly far more devious than the most conniving Jounin ever contrived. Now in the over-three-years he had known them, the silver-haired ninja had thought again and again that they could not possibly come up with a stranger successful plan than the previous one, and time and time again they proved him utterly incorrect. Threatening to reveal the final plot of Icha Icha Paradise…oh yes. These were indeed the same wily rats that had been placed under his guardianship so many months ago, growth or no growth.

As he conceded defeat to the smug, joyful grins of his former pupils and the bells that dangled from their fingers, a warm wave of undiluted love for Naruto and Sakura swept over Kakashi. He had never had children, and most likely would never have them, but pondered if this was what it felt like to see a tottering infant grow into a strong individual. There was loss there as well, a wistful farewell to the twelve-year-olds he had nurtured into these people who stood before him now, but it was dwarfed by the pride of seeing this team, HIS team, transformed into warriors of such great stature.

For no plausible reason, Kakashi suddenly wondered if Naruto still intended to carry out his promise to Sakura, after so many months of distance.

A heavy weight hung over the clearing where these two had begun their path as ninjas, and glad as the Sharingan user was to have his two new-old teammates smiling before him, he was acutely aware of the sorrow of it all. Just as only he and the two members of Team Seven were aware of the empty space beside Naruto, where the ghost of Kakashi's third pupil should have been and wasn't.

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Author's Note: I read Chapter 246. It's Saturday and I had nothing I wanted to do. This happened. Please review. End.


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